From mall to medical center

Medical providers are moving into some of the vast mall space left vacant by bricks-and-mortar retailers that are shrinking because of competition from online sales.

Med City News, picking up from a Wall Street Journal story, cites Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a prime example. Dana-Farber is converting the Atrium Mall, in Chestnut Hill, Mass. into a wellness and medical operation called Life Time Center, where Dana-Farber is a tenant.

The institute is leasing two floors of the former mall for  clinical trials, exams, infusions and support services for adult cancer patients. It plans to open by the end of 2019.

For example,  Med City reports,  UCLA Health provides primary care  out of the Village at Westfield Topanga, in Woodland Hills, Calif.; Southeastern Regional Medical Center is renting at  Lumberton, North Carolina’s Biggs Park Mall, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center runs Vanderbilt Health out of One Hundred Oaks Mall, in Nashville.

Med City reports that Eric Johnson, national director of healthcare at Transwestern Commercial Services, a real estate firm, said, in Med City’s paraphrase “malls provide the structural support to house the heavy medical equipment health systems use. On top of that, a mall’s location alone — often near a highway or busy road — can be helpful in drawing attention to a medical center.

To read the Med City piece, please hit this link.

To read The Wall Street Journal’s story upon which it’s based, please hit this link. (Subscription needed to read the article beyond the top).